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TRIPOLI: Algeria’s oil and gas firm Sonatrach resumed its exploratory drilling in Libya’s Ghadames basin in mid-October, Tripoli’s National Oil Corp. (NOC) said in a statement on Thursday.
The well is located in contract area (95/96) in the Ghadames Basin, near the Libyan-Algerian border, NOC said in the statement. It is also approximately 100 km (62.14 miles) from Wafa field.
“The company plans to complete drilling at an expected final depth of 8,440 feet,” said the NOC.
It said that Sonatrach halted its activities and left the site more than 10 years ago “due to unstable security situation at that time.”
Libya is one of Africa’s biggest oil producers, but output has been disrupted repeatedly in the chaotic decade since 2014, when the country split between rival authorities in the east and west following the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Qaddafi.

LONDON: Syrian authorities this week arrested a former military official accused of executing detainees at Saydnaya prison during the regime of Bashar Assad, the Sana news agency reported.

Akram Selum Abdullah, who was a major general during the Assad era, was captured by personnel from the counterterrorism branch in the Damascus countryside, the Ministry of Interior said.

Abdullah was commander of the military police at the Ministry of Defense from 2014 to 2015, a force accused of committing serious violations against detainees in Sednaya prison, a facility near Damascus that was run by the ministry.

The ministry accused Abdullah of being “directly responsible for carrying out the executions of detainees inside Saydnaya military prison … during his tenure as commander of the military police,” the report said.

Amnesty International has described the prison as a “human slaughterhouse,” where an estimated 30,000 people were detained since 2011. Of those, only about 6,000 have been released, with rest still missing.